Science and Christianity

One of the most distinctive features of the expiring century is the increasing vehemence of the opposition between science and Christianity. That is both natural and inevitable. In the same proportion in which the victorious progress of modern science has surpassed all the scientific achievements of earlier ages has the untenability been proved of those mystic views which would subdue reason under the yoke of an alleged revelation; and the Christian religion belongs to that group. The more solidly modern astronomy, physics, and chemistry have established the sole dominion of inflexible natural laws in the universe at large, and modern botany, zoology, and anthropology have proved the validity of those laws in the entire kingdom of organic nature, so much the more strenuously has the Christian religion, in association with dualistic metaphysics, striven to deny the application of these natural laws in the province of the so-called "spiritual life" -- that is, in one section of the physiology of the brain.

No one has more clearly, boldly, and unanswerably enunciated this open and irreconcilable opposition between the modern scientific and the outworn Christian view than David Friedrich Strauss, the greatest theologian of the nineteenth century. His last work, The Old Faith and the New, is a magnificent expression of the honest conviction of all educated people of the present day who understand this unavoidable conflict between the discredited, dominant doctrines of Christianity and the illuminating, rational revelation of modern science -- all those who have the courage to defend the right of reason against the pretensions of superstition, and who are sensible of the philosophic demand for a unified system of thought. Strauss, as an honorable and courageous free-thinker, has expounded far better than I could the principal points of difference between "the old and the new faith." The absolute irreconcilability of the opponents and the inevitability of their struggle ("for life or death") have been ably presented on the philosophic side by E. Hartmann, in his interesting work on The Self-Destruction of Christianity.

When the works of Strauss and Feuerbach and The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science of J. W. Draper have been read, it may seem superfluous for us to devote a special chapter to the subject. Yet we think it useful, and even necessary for our purpose, to cast a critical glance at the historical course of this great struggle; especially seeing that the attacks of the "Church militant" on science in general, and on the theory of evolution in particular, have become extremely bitter and menacing of late years. Unfortunately, the mental relaxation which has lately set in, and the rising flood of reaction in the political, social, and ecclesiastical world, are only too well calculated to give point to those dangers. If any one doubts it, he has only to look over the conduct of Christian synods and of the German Reichstag during the last few years. Quite in harmony are the recent efforts of many secular governments to get on as good a footing as possible with the "spiritual regiment," their deadly enemy -- that is, to submit to its yoke. The two forces find a common aim in the suppression of free thought and free scientific research, for the purpose of thus more easily securing a complete despotism.

Let us first emphatically protest that it is a question for us of the necessary defence of science and reason against the vigorous attacks of the Christian Church and its vast army, not of an unprovoked attack of science on religion. And, in the first place, our defence must be prepared against Romanism or Ultramontanism. This "one ark of salvation," this Catholic Church "destined for all," is not only much larger and more powerful than the other Christian sects, but it has the exceptional advantage of a vast, centralized organization and an unrivalled political ability. Men of science are often heard to say that the Catholic superstition is no more astute than the other forms of supernatural faith, and that all these insidious institutions are equally inimical to reason and science. As a matter of general theoretical principle the statement may pass, but it is certainly wrong when we look to its practical side. The deliberate and indiscriminate attacks of the ultramontane Church on science, supported by the apathy and ignorance of the masses, are, on account of its powerful organization, much more severe and dangerous than those of other religions.

In order to appreciate correctly the extreme importance of Christianity in regard to the entire history of civilization, and particularly its fundamental opposition to reason and science, we must briefly run over the principal stages of its historical evolution. It may be divided into four periods: (1) primitive Christianity (the first three centuries), (2) papal Christianity (twelve centuries, from the fourth to the fifteenth), (3) the Reformation (three centuries, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth), and (4) modern pseudo-Christianity.

Primitive Christianity embraces the first three centuries. Christ himself, the noble prophet and enthusiast, so full of the love of humanity, was far below the level of classical culture; he knew nothing beyond the Jewish traditions; he has not left a single line of writing. He had, indeed, no suspicion of the advanced stage to which Greek philosophy and science had progressed five hundred years before.

All that we know of him and of his original teaching is taken from the chief documents of the New Testament -- the four gospels and the Pauline epistles. As to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they were selected from a host of contradictory and forged manuscripts of the first three centuries by the three hundred and eighteen bishops who assembled at the Council of Nicaea in 327. The entire list of gospels numbered forty; the canonical list contains four. As the contending and mutually abusive bishops could not agree about the choice, they determined to leave the selection to a miracle. They put all the books (according to the Synodicon of Pappus) together underneath the altar, and prayed that the apocryphal books, of human origin, might remain there, and the genuine, inspired books might be miraculously placed on the table of the Lord. And that, says tradition, really occurred! The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- all written after them, not by them, at the beginning of the second century) and the very different fourth gospel (ostensibly "after" John, written about the middle of the second century) leaped on the table, and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with their thousand mutual contradictions) foundations of Christian doctrine. If any modern "unbeliever" finds this story of the "leap of the sacred books " incredible, we must remind him that it is just as credible as the table-turning and spirit-rapping that are believed to take place to-day by millions of educated people; and that hundreds of millions of Christians believe just as implicitly in their personal immortality; their "resurrection from the dead," and the Trinity of God -- dogmas that contradict pure reason no more and no less than that miraculous bound of the gospel manuscripts. The most important sources after the gospels are the fourteen separate (and generally forged) epistles of Paul. The genuine Pauline epistles (three in number, according to recent criticism to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians) were written before the canonical gospels, and contain less incredible miraculous matter than they. They are also more concerned than the gospels to adjust themselves with a rational view of the world. Hence the advanced theology of modern times constructs its "ideal Christianity" rather on the base of the Pauline epistles than on the gospels, so that it has been called "Paulinism."

The remarkable personality of Paul, who possessed much more culture and practical sense than Christ, is extremely interesting, from the anthropological point of view, from the fact that the racial origin of the two great religious founders is very much the same. Recent historical investigation teaches that Paul's father was of Greek nationality, and his mother of Jewish. The half-breeds of these two races, which are so very distant in origin (although they are branches of the same species, the homo mediterraneus), are often distinguished by a happy blending of talents and temperament, as we find in many recent and actual instances. The plastic Oriental imagination and the critical Western reason often admirably combine and complete each other. That is visible in the Pauline teaching, which soon obtained a greater influence than the earliest Christian notions. Hence it is not incorrect to consider Paulinism a new phenomenon, of which the father was the philosophy of the Greeks, and the mother the religion of the Jews. Neoplatonism is an analogous combination.

As to the real teaching and aims of Christ (and as to many important aspects of his life) the views of conflicting theologians diverge more and more, as historical criticism (Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur, Renan, etc.) puts the accessible facts in their true light, and draws impartial conclusions from them. Two things, certainly, remain beyond dispute -- the lofty principle of universal charity and the fundamental maxim of ethics, the "golden rule" that issues therefrom; both, however, existed in theory and in practice centuries before the time of Christ (cf. chap. xix.). For the rest, the Christians of the early centuries were generally pure Communists, sometimes "Social Democrats," who, according to the prevailing theory in Germany to-day, ought to have been exterminated with fire and sword.

Latin Christianity, variously called Papistry, Romanism, Vaticanism, Ultramontanism, or the Roman Catholic Church, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of civilized man; in spite of the storms that have swept over it, it still exerts a most powerful influence. Of the four hundred and ten million Christians who are scattered over the earth the majority -- that is, two hundred and twenty-five millions -- are Roman Catholics; there are seventy-five million Greek Catholics and one hundred and ten million Protestants. During a period of one thousand two hundred years, from the fourth to the sixteenth century, the papacy has almost absolutely controlled and tainted the spiritual life of Europe; on the other hand, it has won but little territory from the ancient religions of Asia and Africa. In Asia Buddhism still counts five hundred and three million followers, the Brahmanic religion one hundred and thirty-eight millions, and Islam one hundred and twenty millions.

It is the despotism of the papacy that lent its darkest character to the Middle Ages; it meant death to all freedom of mental life, decay to all science, corruption to all morality. From the noble height to which the life of the human mind had attained in classical antiquity, in the centuries before Christ and the first century after Christ, it soon sank, under the rule of the papacy, to a level which, in respect of the knowledge of the truth, can only be termed barbarism. It is often protested that other aspects of mental life -- poetry and architecture, scholastic learning and patristic philosophy -- were richly developed in the Middle Ages. But this activity was in the service of the Church; it did not tend to the cultivation, but to the suppression, of free mental research. The exclusive preparing for an unknown eternity beyond the tomb, the contempt of nature, the withdrawal from the study of it, which are essential elements of Christianity, were urged as a sacred duty by the Roman hierarchy. It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that a change for the better came in with the Reformation.

It is impossible for us here to describe the pitiful retrogression of culture and morality during the twelve centuries of the spiritual despotism of Rome. It is very pithily expressed in a saying of the greatest and the ablest of the Hohenzollerns; Frederick the Great condensed his judgment in the phrase that the study of history led one to think that from Constantine to the date of the Reformation the whole world was insane. L. Buchner has given us an admirable, brief description of this "period of insanity" in his work on Religious and Scientific Systems. The reader who desires a closer acquaintance with the subject would do well to consult the historical works of Ranke, Draper, Kolb, Svoboda, etc. The truthful description of the awful condition of the Christian Middle Ages, which is given by these and other unprejudiced historians, is confirmed by all the reliable sources of investigation, and by the historical monuments which have come down from the saddest period of human history. Educated Catholics, who are sincere truth-seekers, cannot be too frequently recommended to study these historical sources for themselves. This is the more necessary as ultramontane literature has still a considerable influence. The old trick of deceiving the faithful by a complete reversal of facts and an invention of miraculous circumstances is still worked by it with great success. We will only mention Lourdes and the "Holy Coat" of Treves. The ultramontane professor of history at Frankfurt, Johannes Janssen, affords a striking example of the length they will go in distorting historical truth; his much-read works (especially his History of the German People since the Middle Ages) are marred by falsification to an incredible extent. The untruthfulness of these Jesuitical productions is on a level with the credulity and the uncritical judgment of the simple German nation that takes them for gospel.

One of the most interesting of the historical facts which clearly prove the evil of the ultramontane despotism is its vigorous and consistent struggle with science. This was determined on, in principle, from the very beginning of Christianity, inasmuch as it set faith above reason and preached the blind subjection of the one to the other; that was natural, seeing that our whole life on earth was held to be only a preparation for the legendary life beyond, and thus scientific research was robbed of any real value. The deliberate and successful attack on science began in the early part of the fourth century, particularly after the Council of Nicaea (327), presided over by Constantine -- called the "Great" because he raised Christianity to the position of a state religion, and founded Constantinople, though a worthless character, a false-hearted hypocrite, and a murderer. The success of the papacy in its conflict with independent scientific thought and inquiry is best seen in the distressing condition of science and its literature during the Middle Ages. Not only were the rich literary treasures that classical antiquity had bequeathed to the world destroyed for the most part, or withdrawn from circulation, but the rack and the stake insured the silence of every heretic -- that is, every independent thinker. If he did not keep his thoughts to himself, he had to look forward to being burned alive, as was the fate of the great monistic philosopher, Giordano Bruno, the reformer, John Huss,and more than a hundred thousand other "witnesses to the truth." The history of science in the Middle Ages teaches us on every page that independent thought and empirical research were completely buried for twelve sad centuries under the oppression of the omnipotent papacy.

All that we esteem in true Christianity, in the sense of its founder and of his noblest followers, and that we must endeavor to save from the inevitable wreck of this great world religion for our new monistic religion, lies on its ethical and social planes. The principles of true humanism, the golden rule, the spirit of tolerance, the love of man, in the best and highest sense of the word -- all these true graces of Christianity were not, indeed, first discovered and given to the world by that religion, but were successfully developed in the critical period when classical antiquity was hastening to its doom. The papacy, however, has attempted to convert all those virtues into the direct contrary, and still to hang out the sign of the old firm. Instead of Christian charity, it introduced a fanatical hatred of the followers of all other religions; with fire and sword it has pursued, not only the heathen, but every Christian sect that dared resist the imposition of ultramontane dogma. Tribunals for heretics were erected all over Europe, yielding unnumbered victims, whose torments seemed only to fill their persecutors, with all their Christian charity, with a peculiar satisfaction. The power of Rome was directed mercilessly for centuries against everything that stood in its way. Under the notorious Torquemada (1481-98), in Spain alone eight thousand heretics were burned alive and ninety thousand punished with the confiscation of their goods and the most grievous ecclesiastical fines; in the Netherlands, under the rule of Charles V., at least fifty thousand men fell victims to the clerical bloodthirst. And while the heavens resounded with the cry of the martyrs, the wealth of half the world was pouring into Rome, to which the whole of Christianity paid tribute, and the self-styled representatives of God on earth and their accomplices (not infrequently Atheists themselves) wallowed in pleasure and vice of every description. "And all these privileges," said the frivolous, syphilitic Pope, Leo X., "have been secured to us by the fable of Jesus Christ."

Yet, with all the discipline of the Church and the fear of God, the condition of European society was pitiable. Feudalism, serfdom, the grace of God, and the favor of the monks ruled the land; the poor helots were only too glad to be permitted to raise their miserable huts under the shadow of the castle or the cloister, their secular and spiritual oppressors and exploiters. Even to-day we suffer from the aftermath of these awful ages and conditions, in which there was no question of care for science or higher mental culture save in rare circumstances and in secret. Ignorance, poverty, and superstition combined with the immoral operation of the law of celibacy, which had been introduced in the eleventh century, to consolidate the ever-growing power of the papacy. It has been calculated that there were more than ten million victims of fanatical religious hatred during this "Golden Age" of papal domination; and how many more million human victims must be put to the account of celibacy, oral confession, and moral constraint, the most pernicious and accursed institutions of the papal despotism! Unbelieving philosophers, who have collected disproofs of the existence of God, have overlooked one of the strongest arguments in that sense the fact that the Roman "Vicar of Christ" could for twelve centuries perpetrate with impunity the most shameful and horrible deeds "in the name of God."

The history of civilization, which we are so fond of calling "the history of the world," enters upon its third period with the Reformation of the Christian Church, just as its second period begins with the founding of Christianity. With the Reformation begins the new birth of fettered reason, the reawakening of science, which the iron hand of the Christian papacy had relentlessly crushed for twelve hundred years. At the same time the spread of general education had already commenced, owing to the invention of printing about the middle of the fifteenth century; and towards its close several great events occurred, especially the discovery of America in 1492, which prepared the way for the "renaissance " of science in company with that of art. Indeed, certain very important advances were made in the knowledge of nature during the first half of the sixteenth century, which shook the prevailing system to its very foundations. Such were the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan in 1522, which afforded empirical proof of its rotundity, and the founding of the new system of the world by Copernicus in 1543.

Yet the 3ist of October in the year 1517, the day on which Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the wooden door of Wittenburg Cathedral, must be regarded as the commencement of a new epoch; for on that day was forced the iron door of the prison in which the Papal Church had detained fettered reason for twelve hundred years. The merits of the great reformer have been partly exaggerated, partly underestimated. It has been justly pointed out that Luther, like all the other reformers, remained in manifold subjection to the deepest superstition. Thus he was throughout life a supporter of the rigid dogma of the verbal inspiration of the Bible; he zealously maintained the doctrines of the resurrection, original sin, predestination, justification by faith, etc. He rejected as folly the great discovery of Copernicus, because in the Bible "Joshua bade the sun, not the earth, stand still." He utterly failed to appreciate the great political revolutions of his time, especially the profound and just agitation of the peasantry. Worse still was the fanatical Calvin, of Geneva, who had the talented Spanish physician, Serveto, burned alive in 1553, because he rejected the absurd dogma of the Trinity. The fanatical "true believers" of the reformed Church followed only too frequently in the blood-stained footsteps of their papal enemies; as they do even in our own day.

Deeds of unparalleled cruelty followed in the train of the Reformation -- the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the persecution of the Huguenots in France, bloody heretic-hunts in Italy, civil war in England, and the Thirty Years War in Germany. Yet, in spite of those grave blemishes, to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries belongs the honor of once more opening a free path to the thoughtful mind, and delivering reason from the oppressive yoke of the papacy. Thus only was made possible that great development of different tendencies in critical philosophy and of new paths in science which won for the subsequent eighteenth century the honorable title of "the century of enlightenment."

As the fourth and last stage in the history of Christianity we oppose our nineteenth century to all its predecessors. It is true that the enlightenment of preceding centuries had promoted critical thought in every direction, and the rise of science itself had furnished powerful empirical weapons; yet it seems to us that our progress along both lines has been quite phenomenal during the nineteenth century. It has inaugurated an entirely new period in the history of the human mind, characterized by the development of the monistic philosophy of nature. At its very commencement the foundations were laid of a new anthropology (by the comparative anatomy of Cuvier) and of a new biology (by the Philosophic Zoologique of Lamarck). The two great French scientists were quickly succeeded by two contemporary German scholars -- Baer, the founder of the science of evolution, and Johannes Muller, the founder of comparative morphology and physiology. A pupil of Muller, Theodor Schwann, created the farreaching cellular theory in 1838, in conjunction with M. Schleiden. Lyell had already traced the evolution of the earth to natural causes, and thus proved the application to our planet of the mechanical cosmogony which Kant had sketched with so much insight in 1755. Finally, Robert Mayer and Helmholtz established the principle of energy in 1842 the second, complementary half of the great law of substance, the first half of which (the persistence of matter) had been previously discovered by Lavoisier. Forty years ago Charles Darwin crowned all these profound revelations of the intimate nature of the universe by his new theory of evolution, the greatest natural-philosophical achievement of our century.

What is the relation of modern Christianity to this vast and unparalleled progress of science? In the first place, the deep gulf between its two great branches, conservative Romanism and progressive Protestantism, has naturally widened. The ultramontane clergy (and we must associate with them the orthodox "evangelical alliance") had naturally to offer a strenuous opposition to this rapid advance of the emancipated mind; they continued unmoved in their rigid literal belief, demanding the unconditional surrender of reason to dogma. Liberal Protestantism, on the other hand, took refuge in a kind of monistic pantheism, and sought a means of reconciling two contradictory principles. It endeavored to combine the unavoidable recognition of the established laws of nature, and the philosophic conclusions that followed from them, with a purified form of religion, in which scarcely anything remained of the distinctive teaching of faith. There were many attempts at compromise to be found between the two extremes; but the conviction rapidly spread that dogmatic Christianity had lost every foundation, and that only its valuable ethical contents should be saved for the new monistic religion of the twentieth century. As, however, the existing external forms of the dominant Christian religion remained unaltered, and as, in spite of a progressive political development, they are more intimately than ever connected with the practical needs of the State, there has arisen that widespread religious profession in educated spheres which we can only call "pseudo-Christianity" -- at the bottom it is a "religious lie" of the worst character. The great dangers which attend this conflict between sincere conviction and the hypocritical profession of modern pseudo-Christians are admirably described in Max Nordau's interesting work on The Conventional Lies of Civilization.

In the midst of this obvious falseness of prevalent pseudo-Christianity there is one favorable circumstance for the progress of a rational study of nature: its most powerful and bitterest enemy, the Roman Church, threw off its mask of ostensible concern for higher mental development about the middle of the nineteenth century, and declared a guerre a l'outrance against independent science. This happened in three important challenges to reason, for the explicitness and resoluteness of which modern science and culture cannot but be grateful to the "Vicar of Christ." (1) In December, 1854, the pope promulgated the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary. (2) Ten years afterwards -- in December, 1864 -- the pope published, in his famous encyclica, an absolute condemnation of the whole of modern civilization and culture; in the syllabus that accompanied it he enumerated and anathematized all the rational theses and philosophical principles which are regarded by modern science as lucid truths. (3) Finally, six years afterwards -- on July 13, 1870 -- the militant head of the Church crowned his folly by claiming infallibility for himself and all his predecessors in the papal chair. This triumph of the Roman curia was communicated to the astonished world five days afterwards, on the very day on which France declared war with Prussia. Two months later the temporal power of the pope was taken from him in consequence of the war.

These three stupendous acts of the papacy were such obvious assaults on the reason of the nineteenth century that they gave rise, from the very beginning, to a most heated discussion even within orthodox Catholic circles. When the Vatican Council proceeded to define the dogma of infallibility on July 13, 1870, only three-fourths of the bishops declared in its favor, 451 out of 601 assenting; many other bishops, who wished to keep clear of the perilous definition, were absent from the council. But the shrewd pontiff had calculated better than the timid "discreet Catholics": even this extraordinary dogma was blindly accepted by the credulous and uneducated masses of the faithful.

The whole history of the papacy, as it is substantiated by a thousand reliable sources and accessible documents, appears to the impartial student as an unscrupulous tissue of lying and deceit, a reckless pursuit of absolute mental despotism and secular power, a frivolous contradiction of all the high moral precepts which true Christianity enunciates -- charity and toleration, truth and chastity, poverty and self-denial. When we judge the long series of popes and of the Roman princes of the Church, from whom the pope is chosen, by the standard of pure Christian morality, it is clear that the great majority of them were pitiful impostors, many of them utterly worthless and vicious. These well-known historical facts, however, do not prevent millions of educated Catholics from admitting the infallibility which the pope has claimed for himself; they do not prevent Protestant princes from going to Rome, and doing reverence to the pontiff (their most dangerous enemy); they do not prevent the fate of the German people from being intrusted to-day to the hands of the servants and followers of this "pious impostor" in the Reichstag -- thanks to the incredible political indolence and credulity of the nation.

The most interesting of the three great events by which the papacy has endeavored to maintain and strengthen its despotism in the nineteenth century is the publication of the encyclica and the syllabus in December, 1864. In these remarkable documents all independent action was forbidden to reason and science, and they were commanded to submit implicitly to faith -- that is, to the decrees of the infallible pope. The great excitement which followed this sublime piece of effrontery in educated and independent circles was in proportion with the stupendous contents of the encyclica. Draper has given us an excellent discussion of its educational and political significance in his History of the Conflict between Science and Religion.

The dogma of the immaculate conception seems, perhaps, to be less audacious and significant than the encyclica and the dogma of the infallibility of the pope. Yet not only the Roman hierarchy, but even some of the orthodox Protestants (the Evangelical Alliance, for instance), attach great importance to this thesis. What is known as the "immaculate oath" -- that is, the confirmation of faith by an oath taken on the immaculate conception of Mary is still regarded by millions of Christians as a sacred obligation. Many believers take the dogma in a twofold application; they think that the mother of Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost as well as Mary herself. Comparative and critical theology has recently shown that this myth has no greater claim to originality than most of the other stories in the Christian mythology; it has been borrowed from older religions, especially Buddhism. Similar myths were widely circulated in India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece several centuries before the birth of Christ. Whenever a king's unwedded daughter, or some other maid of high degree, gave birth to a child, the father was always pronounced to be a god, or a demi-god; in the Christian case it was the Holy Ghost.

The special endowments of mind or body which often distinguished these "children of love" above ordinary offspring were thus partly explained by "heredity." Distinguished "sons of God" of this kind were held in high esteem both in antiquity and during the Middle Ages, while the moral code of modern civilization reproaches them with their want of honorable parentage. This applies even more forcibly to "daughters of God," though the poor maidens are just as little to blame for their want of a father. For the rest, every one who is familiar with the beautiful mythology of classical antiquity knows that these sons and daughters of the Greek and Roman gods often approach nearest to the highest ideal of humanity. Recollect the large legitimate family, and the still more numerous illegitimate offspring, of Zeus.

To return to the particular question of the impregnation of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost, we are referred to the gospels for testimony to the fact. The only two evangelists who speak of it, Matthew and Luke, relate in harmony that the Jewish maiden Mary was betrothed to the carpenter Joseph, but became pregnant without his co-operation, and, indeed, "by the Holy Ghost." As we have already related, the four canonical gospels which are regarded as the only genuine ones by the Christian Church, and adopted as the foundation of faith, were deliberately chosen from a much larger number of gospels, the details of which contradict each other sometimes just as freely as the assertions of the four. The fathers of the Church enumerate from forty to fifty of these spurious or apocryphal gospels; some of them are written both in Greek and Latin -- for instance, the gospel of James, of Thomas, of Nicodemus, and so forth. The details which these apocryphal gospels give of the life of Christ, especially with regard to his birth and childhood, have just as much (or, on the whole, just as little) claim to historical validity as the four canonical gospels.

Now we find in one of these documents an historical statement, confirmed, moreover, in the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua, which probably furnishes the simple and natural solution of the "world-riddle" of the supernatural conception and birth of Christ. The author curtly gives us in one sentence the remarkable statement which contains this solution: "Josephus Pandera, the Roman officer of a Calabrian legion which was in Judaea, seduced Miriam of Bethlehem, and was the father of Jesus." Other details given about Miriam (the Hebrew name for Mary) are far from being to the credit of the "Queen of Heaven."

Naturally, these historical details are carefully avoided by the official theologian, but they assort badly with the traditional myth, and lift the veil from its mystery in a very simple and natural fashion. That makes it the more incumbent on impartial research and pure reason to make a critical examination of these statements. It must be admitted that they have much more title to credence than all the other statements about the birth of Christ. When, on familiar principles of science, we put aside the notion of supernatural conception through an "overshadowing of the Most High" as a pure myth, there only remains the widely accepted version of modern rational theology -- that Joseph, the Jewish carpenter, was the true father of Christ. But this assumption is explicitly contradicted by many texts of the gospels; Christ himself was convinced that he was a "Son of God," and he never recognized his foster-father, Joseph, as his real parent. Joseph, indeed, wanted to leave his betrothed when he found her pregnant without his interference. He gave up this idea when an angel appeared to him in a dream and pacified him. As it is expressly stated in the first chapter of Matthew (vv. 24, 25), there was no sexual intercourse between Joseph and Mary until after Jesus was born.

The statement of the apocryphal gospels, that the Roman officer, Pandera, was the true father of Christ, seems all the more credible when we make a careful anthropological study of the personality of Christ. He is generally regarded as purely Jewish. Yet the characteristics which distinguish his high and noble personality, and which give a distinct impress to his religion, are certainly not Semitical; they are rather features of the higher Arian race, and especially of its noblest branch, the Hellenes. Now, the name of Christ's real father, "Pandera," points unequivocally to a Greek origin; in one manuscript, in fact, it is written "Pandora." Pandora was, according to the Greek mythology, the first woman, born of the earth by Vulcan and adorned with every charm by the gods, who was espoused by Epimetheus, and sent by Zeus to men with the dread "Pandora-box," containing every evil, in punishment for the stealing of divine fire from heaven by Prometheus.

And it is interesting to see the different reception that the love-story of Miriam has met with at the hands of the four great Christian nations of civilized Europe. The stern morality of the Teutonic races entirely repudiates it; the righteous German and the prudish Briton prefer to believe blindly in the impossible thesis of a conception "by the Holy Ghost." It is well known that this strenuous and carefully paraded prudery of the higher classes (especially in England) is by no means reflected in the true condition of sexual morality in high quarters. The revelations which the Pall Mall Gazette, for instance, made on the subject twelve years ago vividly recalled the condition of Babylon.

The Romantic races, which ridicule this prudery and take sexual relations less seriously, find Mary's Romance attractive enough; the special cult which "Our Lady" enjoys in France and Italy is often associated with this love-story with curious naivete. Thus, for example, Paul de Regla (Dr. Desjardin), author of Jesus of Nazareth considered from a Scientific, Historical, and Social Standpoint (1894), finds precisely in the illegitimate birth of Christ a special "title to the halo that irradiates his noble form."

It seemed to me necessary to enter fully into this important question of the origin of Christ in the sense of impartial historical science, because the Church militant itself lays great emphasis on it, and because it regards the miraculous structure which has been founded on it as one of its strongest weapons against modern thought. The highest ethical value of pure primitive Christianity and the ennobling influence of this "religion of love" on the history of civilization are quite independent of those mythical dogmas. The so-called "revelations" on which these myths are based are incompatible with the firmest results of modern science.

Thanks, I'll try to work my way through this massive text, Osgoode.

But frankly, I grow tired and weary of this material. I know some version that includes the Holy Bible's account is the truth. Why do we think our primary mission here on Earth includes "proving" articles of faith. It's impossible! Anyone who has not made the "leap of faith" after studying the beautiful symmetry and complexity of life is ignoring the obvious. Nothing I can do brings home the truth found in the fossil record or, the amazing results of the Human Genome Project, even they won't sway a scientific mind or open up for reconsideration the cause of a Creator God. They won't read long posts like yours anyway. We need to back off our rants, IMHO. Save your witness for a time when people are broken down by this difficult life and seeking a new foundation to rebuild upon.

I once spammed these kinds of articles to all my atheist and pagan friends. The result, they won't read my e-mails anymore. They have been totally turned off to anything I might post. How can that be what God expects from me?

I was delighted to realize recently that it has never been our job to build an earthly "shinning city on the hill" and it's not our priority to bring new souls into the kingdom of God. Please don't mistake what I'm saying; we do need to be ready with our witness and we do need to be ready to lead people in the Sinners Prayer, but God does all of the preparatory work necessary for salvation. Our current mission in this New Testament era is encouragement of other believers and glorifying God. Remember, God the Father causes mens hearts to grow hungry for truth, only then do sinners begin looking for eternity. That conviction leads them to seek out Jesus Christ the Son. Jesus the Son makes it possible for reconciliation between a holy, righteous God and a totally broken and sinful man.

Maybe knowing this will help you handle your frustration with the fallen scientific community Osgoode? I know it has helped me back off and let God work His Will on family members and other people I love.

In Christ,

DrMike

[[For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”]]

Here’s a prime example of just exactly what that verse is talking about:

“The betrayal that most bothers him comes from religion. Dawkins is an atheist, and indeed a strenuous, militant atheist. He is proud of being an atheist. He thinks religious belief is a dangerous virus, and that it is a crime to infect the mind of a child with it. He thinks religions are sinks of falsehood (most of them have to be, since at most one could be true), and especially he regrets their public influence. He is made apoplectic by, for instance, the pontifications of religious “leaders” on whether human clones would be truly human, made in blissful ignorance of the fact that identical twins are clones of each other.”

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/Dawkins.htm

The book in question in the Scopes trial, “A Civic Biology”, was very racist, as is evolutionary theory.

Instead of all “races” of humans being descended from the same created humans, some races are more evolved than others, and conversely, some races are more closely related to animals.

<<<<<<
of the “five races or varieties of men” found today, some are clearly more evolved than others. There are, Hunter claimed, the four lower types of humans, including the “Ethiopian or negro type,” “the Malay or brown race,” “the American Indian,” and the “Mongolian or yellow race.” “Finally,” Hunter concluded, there is “the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.”
<<<<<<<

Words mean what they mean. "Races" was about people back then just like now.

It's true that the word race had both meanings in Darwin's time. But, in the context of his book, race referred to species.

Darwin was a total racist.

So were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and pretty much any person in history, judged by today's standards.

The early 20th-century racist/eugenics movement came directly from his inspiration.

And the Nazi death camps were only possible because of railroads and chemistry. All Darwin did was describe a natural process (evolution). Others decided to use his discovery for their own political or social ends. But, that misuse in no way discredits the science behind the TOE.

Now consider this... If Darwin is correct, science was not misused. The science of eugenics is sound, and the technology of eugenics was used as intended. The Nazi understood that it was just animal husbandry - objectively tried and true, scientifically testable and falsifiable. It works.

Darwin opened the door to animal husbandry on humans (Darwin's big revelation was that we’re all just different animals from the same tree, right?) and the subjective element was unleashed like Pandora's Box. An animal breeder can subjectively pick and choose whichever traits are desirable or undesirable. Runts can be eliminated as "unfit" or "burdensome" like pigs, or they can be kept and bred further for "cuteness", like dogs. Once humans are determined to be just animals, there is no objective reason to value one trait over another and it should not be surprising then that different breeders have different goals in mind for their livestock.

If the purpose of life really is just survival and producing fit offspring, then science should simply observe only that the fit survived and the unfit died. Nope science was not being misused... the only thing that was misused was the term "Human". Reduce the meaning of "human" to "just another animal", and eugenics is fair game, and the scientific data is well supported. Eugenics is only abhorrent to those who recognize that there is something transcendently special about humans.

Here is more from Hunter’s Civic Biology:

Parasitism and its Cost to Society. - Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.
The Remedy. - If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Above was taught as fact in schools and the perversion was not of animal husbandry or of Darwin's theory. The perversion was not even of science. The perversion was the definition of what it meant to be human. When man became a mere animal, it was only a matter of time till he was treated like one.

If the TOE is correct? Darwin directed his one long argument in the The Origin of Species against design and purpose (Paley) and the logical consequences followed. The ‘current’ TOE stipulates; no design, no purpose, no goal, and humans are just animals continuing to evolve.

Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism…
---Douglas Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology (1998, 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates), p. 5

Darwin opened the door to animal husbandry on humans

Yes, it became backed by so-called science:

The influence primarily responsible for the modern eugenics movement was the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolution following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859.
—Samuel J. Holmes, Human Genetics, ch.25 (1936).

Here is more from Hunter’s Civic Biology:

That book got a lot of milage out of the Jukes and Kallikaks and Davenport. Hunter's civic biology and loads more stuff like it can be found here (along with William Jennings Bryan's essays) Inbred Science.

I like this one by Karl Pearson, addressed to an audience of surgeons:

Let me, even at the risk of talking about the familiar, sketch for you the broad outlines of Darwin's theory of evolutionary progress. The individual better fitted to its environment lived longer than its fellows, had more offspring, and these, inheriting its better fitness, raised the type of the race. The environment against which the individual had to struggle here was not only formed by the other members of its species, not only by its physical surroundings, but by the germs of disease of all types. According to Darwin -- and some of us still believe him to be right -- the ascent of man, physical and mental, was brought about by this survival of the fitter. Now, if you are going lo take Darwinism as your theory of life and apply it to human problems, you must not only believe it to be true, but you must set to, and demonstrate that it actually applies.
Darwin's theory means this, that if individuals are reared under a constant environment, and a larger percentage of them are killed off in the first year of life, then a smaller percentage of those remaining will die in the later years of life, because more of the weaklings have been killed off... Now if there be -- and I, for one, think that two independent lines of inquiry demonstrate that there is -- a fairly stringent selection of the weaker individuals by the mortality of infancy and childhood, what will happen, if by increased medical skill and by increased state support and private charity, we enable the weaklings to survive and to propagate their kind? Why, undoubtedly we shall have a weaker race... Surely here is an antinomy -- a fundamental opposition between medical progress and the science of national eugenics, of race efficiency. Gentlemen, I venture to think it is an antinomy, and will remain one until the nation at large recognises as a fundamental doctrine the principle that everyone, being born, has the right to live, but the right to live does not in itself convey the right to everyone to reproduce their kind... Our social instincts, our common humanity enforce upon us the conception that each person born has the right to live, yet this right essentially connotes a suspension of the full intensity of natural selection. Darwinism and medical progress are opposed forces, and we shall gain nothing by screening that fact, or, in opposition to ample evidence, asserting that Darwinism has no application to civilised man... I say that only a very thorough eugenic policy can possibly save our race from the evils which must flow from the antagonism between natural selection and medical progress.

The arrogance of evolutionists is striking. Imagine it, telling an audience of surgeons that the medical profession is in conflict with Darwinism, and they have to do something about it.

Reduce the meaning of "human" to "just another animal", and eugenics is fair game, and the scientific data is well supported. Eugenics is only abhorrent to those who recognize that there is something transcendently special about humans.

Yes, good point. That's the reason why some of Haeckel's nonsense theories were put into textbooks, even though everyone knew they were false. If you can get the public to believe men have no souls and human embryos are just fish or chickens, then abortion, euthanasia and all that becomes easier to sell.

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